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The area along Jerome Avenue north of Yankee Stadium is one of several neighborhoods the de Blasio administration has targeted for rezoning to facilitate the mayor’s affordable housing plan, each of which has seen a different flavor of response to the possibility of new development.
East New York organizations produced a community plan to rival the city’s own. East Harlem groups have largely rallied around a planning process curated by the Council speaker with the administration’s input.
Along the Jerome Avenue corridor, the reaction included a community-generated vision similar to East New York’s. But the response in the Bronx has also had a distinctly artistic flair: Last year, the Bronx Documentary Center took over a muffler shop to feature photos of the men and women who work along the avenue.
That artistic theme continues Sunday when the New Settlement Community Center hosts its 3rd annual Bronx Gentrification Conference. Sponsored by the Bronx Documentary Center, City Limits and Community Action for Safe Apartments, the conference features a panel (moderated by yours truly) including Vicki Been, the commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and Fitzroy Christian, a longtime tenant leader at CASA.
Also on the panel: Community advocate, educator and filmmaker Valerie Vazquez and Bronx photographer Rhynna Santos. Besides the panel discussion, Sunday’s lineup will offer live theater and several short films.
The topic at hand isn’t the city’s rezoning plan, because that is still in the works. Instead we’ll talk about the displacement concerns that have greeted the rezoning process, their roots in history and the tools communities and public agencies have to address them.
Details about the event can be found here.
1 Comment
Howie G
I was at the event, and this Jerome Avenue proposal will totally destroy the neighborhood. HPD Commissioner Vicky Been was acting as a Nazi capo by luring people to accept the so-called 80/20 offer. The 20% affordable housing is not affordable for most people in the neighborhood in any case, if it ever gets built. You have to make around 69K a year, not 25K which is what people there make.
This stupid bribe is really so the real estate people can put up their cereal boxes where “investors” will not even live more than a few weeks a year. Investors know that under the Dodd-Frank law, bank bail-ins will shortly begin in the new financial crash, ie. the bail-in of their savings. So they are real estate crazy. It really is Glass stegall Act of 1933 re-passage or die. We have to bankrupt the speculators. http://www.LaRouchepac.com is right… Look at the nonsense Barclay Stadium thing in Brooklyn… they did not build housing, affordable housing, did they? They lied, right?? This is even more disgusting because the Jerome Ave plan will wipe out the auto shops, and machine tool shop businesses. This is genocide. No way, we must have real NYCHA style housing or nothing.